


Memories Fading Dead Awaiting

by SwampWitch333



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friendship, Gen, How Do I Tag, Hurt No Comfort, I Don't Even Know, Lesbian Character, Love, Love/Hate, Mental Health Issues, Military, Past Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prison, Running Away, Siblings, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-01-21 09:26:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21297212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwampWitch333/pseuds/SwampWitch333
Summary: Vague mentions of suicides
Kudos: 1





	Memories Fading Dead Awaiting

It damn near broke my heart. Not that a kind, good hearted gas station cashier in the heart of the low country had to tell me. Rather that, my mother could not keep track or lied about my age.

"Honey, you're 38, not 40.", her voice was rich and sweet with legit southern hospitality, as she checked my i.d. as i puchased cigarettes. Her darkened skin shone as if the daughter of an Egyptian goddess herself, dark curly hair cropped short and neat. 

Unable to resist an old home at one point, I'd always stop off at Beaufort, South Carolina. Beautiful place with good hearted beautiful people, like the cashier. It didn't seem to change. Exit 33.

Sun beaming off her deep tanned skin, i must have gaped at her, for she had made my day. A stranger that gave a damn. After all the years in solitude, i had forgotten my own age, other's including my own mother had as well. I was younger than i had thought. For a complete stranger to break it to me, and to do so with such love and kindness in her words, straight from her heart, had brought tears to me eyes.  
Most places, people do not even care, they possess a cold disengaged quality of not caring, coldness. The people of Beaufort had always been different. More heartfelt, honest and genuine than other places.

Why could i not just live here again, escaping the misery brought on my mother in New York!?

My beaten down, sun faded was suv packed chock full with all i owned, five cats and a dog, i had to put their needs before mine; fur babies. Items were tied down to the roof rack and literally hung off the spare tire. A spare which would have been no use in emergency, as it was flat, it's better days long past. Such as my own. Child gates, of old wood and hard plastic crosshatch were hunkered down by knots of paracord against the missing back window of the truck where the trunk was.

Oh, how we have taken this route before. A different trip, a different time, with less precious cargo. Were it just i, myself, alone, i would have stopped and stayed awhile. Old ghosts always come back to haunt. Later on, sometimes they morph into memories. The past, as it was was, for things change at breakneck speed. To never be again.

Wrong turns, wrestling with my fate, feigns become a suckerpunch.

The rows of gas pumps back to back stare at me. Each contains a tv, playing some randomness. Modern humans' fate. Pump gas and watch a commercial or someone talk, it's so bizarre to me.

The great Cypress trees, moss covered arms enveloping me onto i have become one with the tree and cease existing.

Gators, the meat from them, so tender and tasty. Crabbing from docks in waterways that meander their banks until they reach the final destination of the Atlantic. Crabbing, cooking with just water, the natural brine waters of South Carolina having done all the flavoring already. Different homes and lives so far apart it is as if they were not my own.

Sitting in an old gnarled tree, low tide below, watching the fiddler crabs rush to and fro their tiny dirt holes. A book in my hand, yet my eyes cast upon nature. The beauty of it all, to go back in my mind and time.

The whoosh and dips of loud Marine Corps jets practicing, loops and figure eights. One learns to sleep through such. Fighter pilots above the house, hanging out the open window onto the old wooden deck. In it's paint chipped, warped weather glory to watch the fighter pilots in action, mouth agape, in awe.

For all the rivers of bad blood that flow, selfish mother's who insist upon giving birth, as they cannot think for themselves. Were it not for my menagerie of "fur babies", i would be dead or ran far from the biological rotten roots that continue to ensnare me back. My grandmother, bless her soul, was a wonderful woman. My mother was not. To endure such torture as to live under the same roof as an egg donor for the sake of my fur babies was a worse fate than life in prison.

For let her eyes learn to see in the dark as i have. To never suffer from her 'selective hearing', to hear everything, every crunch of grass blade or twig; every whisper. For what is there to fear! Death?! Ha! The jester of all human fears! So much so, they envision falsehoods such as afterlives to ease their 'sinful' minds. What greater peace is there, than nothing! To cease to exist, no sound, sight, no being, why nothing at all! The depressives' cure!

For the state of sunshine had so much promise, it was an illusion. Starved, ensuring my babies ate before i did. We had no working stove, I'd build a firepit to cook a freshly caught catfish on. When weather got too cold, we would pack sleep under piles of blankets. The local McDonald's; the only fast food joint near had thought I was homeless. I didn't care, for other's such as those embezzling Taylor's, evil neighbor's stealing money from their non-profit organization for homeless Veterans, had tried to make my life hell.  
Fools, the lot of them. How happy i was when the local disabled veterans post booted the fraudulent group out. Worse yet, the man who ran it owned the local Sheriff's to a degree. Drove around in a vehicle with his own swarmy face on it, a narcissist. Would change opinions like night and day, depending on who he was speaking. The real saw through his bullshit.

For it be not for the safety of my furred babies, i would have NEVER returned to this Godforsaken place! Rather put a bullet in my head first! Than to deal with a sociopathic idiot of an uncle and a woman who thinks she's oh so clever Borderline of a mother! I've already made reparations on account of my death, so my babies will have the best be it death comes for me early. For this lot if two familial mental cases could never care for them properly. It's my babies and angst that keeps me breathing. So sick and tired. My mother had attempted to sabotage my trip for my babies to safety with risk of death and my incarceration again. Oh, this apple won't fall far from thy wicked tree.The Lioness hidden..for their sake.

~~~

My eldest, Misha stared up with her usual regal stance, gazing upon grandmother's vintage wallpaper. A scene of Venice, her coat almost blending in perfectly with the pictures and paints of the print. Long haired, a Siamese mix "ragdoll" breed as they say, she was one of my gorgeous babies. She glanced with failing vision, discerning life itself from the wallpaper of olden times. My babies, the sole reason for my existence, the sole joy i had in this world. For my depression was horrific, i cared not about liquidation of my assets. Last of my lineage, when i was dead, i was dead. Then nothing mattered. My only concern, my fur babies.

~~~

Paralyzed by the anxiety of living and breathing. Pacing, stopping only to care and love my fur babies. For what little sleep came to me, i grasped onto the escape as if i knew my soul would ever become whole again. Not this fractured broken into a tiny millions of pieces, sharpened shanks, shards of mutilated reflection of my hideous transformation.  
Books no longer offered escapes, as they once had. Everyday, the same, save for a rare useless appointment. With a doctor who could never help.  
My only loves, my felines, pack sleeping with them day and night. I neglected myself, not showering. My teeth had long since rotted and all pulled out. Whenever i awoke, my eyes felt as if sandpaper had dusted them, my throat cut glass. An unknown affliction that likely caused the loss of my teeth, for they say the teeth are alive.  
Mine have died.  
Each tooth rotting, inside out, pieces of tarnished enamel breaking off, falling away, as so many promises once made to my being. For there can be dignity in death.

~~~

Tears cascading down my scarred cheeks, my ears ringing as if bells tolled in some faraway land. Not a bad tinnitus, just bizarre. As if my head has become a talking bowl instrument.

Back in the Northlands, i dream again at night. And if lucky daytime. An first love haunts me like a ghost, other phantoms unknowns. Brittle brown crunchy leaves fall upon my head, winter is nearing. I take a final drag of my cigarette before stubbing it out upon iced water in a bucket.

Sleep to dream.  
Dream to sleep.  
For this is, my only relief i get.  
Something better than nothing.  
The unobtainable, unreachable masses.  
The sea has been poisoned; it's fish gasping for air, gils retching, beached ashore.  
Toxins of algae blooms, for humans cannot pump enough oxygen into the rivers.  
Old fisherman have told me the tale.  
Life's work over, until the earth resets itself.  
If it does.

So many times leaving this hell and returning, stories of elsewhere. The best being the low country of South Carolina. The worst being where i was last left fleeing, truck loaded and broken, fur babies crated. The shithole i was in, a part of Florida.

The running. Escaping my past, the abuse, my mother.  
As a child she told me i was allergic to chocolate and pizza. At the other children's birthday parties; when i did get invited i could not partake. As if i was to suffer for the sins of my father. God knows how many chocolate bars i had stolen from the local corner store and supermarket as a child, only to wolf them down 2, 3 at a time and dispose of the wrappers before my mother figured it out. She had raised me to believe i myself was a burden to all. I was spoonfed lies about most things, including my half siblings. She never spoke of my father. The shifting moods of my mother were worse than the eye of a storm. Never knowing when she would lash out and violently strike me. I guess i was that lone bowling pin she could never knock down. She raged, she hit, she blamed, pulled hair. She threw a radio in anger at me, then accused me of breaking it. My child self would cry and apologize and state, "fine" when she asked some ridiculous question.  
Nothing was "fine". She had brainwashed me to a degree so I'd never drive in the city. She told me repeatedly I'd never be happy. She'd do what she could to was her hands of me.  
Little did she know. 

~~~~

Barely 16 years old, a first love, lesbian, the studious raven haired pale vampiregrrl caught my eye. Little had i known, always being the last to know, she had fallen for me.  
On her friend's rooftop we stared up at the stars. A whole lot of stoned freaks and rejects. I wished on the stars to my father.  
Laying next to her, our embrace tight our heads close together, first heartbreak. Bygones are long gone. 

~~~

One time i found an old black and white photograph, still in it's vintage frame at a thrift store. A woman posed with her cat in younger years. Of course i bought it.  
How sad one's personal photos end up for donation.  
That will be me i figured. There's no one left to want my photos or jump drives of my cats, myself, my life. I'm the last of my line. Do my possessions end up in a second hand thrift store after my death?  
I've no heirs, no relations that care. It's depressing.  
As if i must tattoo images i want to save onto my body to take to my grave. It's why i feel so much for those elderly who have no one and are alone.

Too many friends have died young, gun shots to the head, self inflicted. Overdoses, hangings, murders.  
Why can it not be me! I was never supposed to live this long!

~~~

Now i wait for death to come for me. In the same house with a devil of a mother, Goddess forbid i complain of ailments. She compares everything to her own problems or those she's know. Useless for one who has a Master's degree in psychology. For she has gave up on her only child a long time ago. 

~~~

Only i live for my fur babies. I fear dying before them to the point I've been trying to arrange their care in the event of my death. Away from this house of hell.  
I fear being away from the fur babies at all. No chemo no nothing is an option. I do not know options any longer, my state of being has deteriorated so much so.

I do not want pity and i fear i have written so as to miscontrue this. There's too much to let out, get out. It takes too long.

Peace is what i want, eternal rest of the nonexistent.


End file.
